


The Forgotten Queen

by Isis



Category: Historical RPF, The Shining Company - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Historical References, Lost Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:01:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24065476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: Thirty-eight years after the battle at Catraeth, Dyn Eidin was conquered by Oswiu of Northumbria, and Niamh became part of the new queen's household.
Relationships: Cynan Mac Clydno/Princess Niamh
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9
Collections: Sutcliff Swap 2020





	The Forgotten Queen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fawatson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fawatson/gifts).



They call me the forgotten queen; the queen that saw her throne taken and her country dissolved. It is true that when I was a girl, I was a princess, but no queen am I, nor ever were. The queen was Aoibhe, my eldest sister’s daughter, who gave the keys of Dyn Eidin to Oswiu, who had slain her husband and sons. He was to rule the Hen Ogledd in the name of his brother, King Oswald of Northumbria, and as they were Christians, Aoibhe’s life and virtue were spared. She was sent to the cloister, to pray for the souls of her slaughtered people.

“And you, old woman,” said King Oswiu, his gaze landing on me. He was very young, younger than Aoibhe. “You are her mother?”

“Her mother’s sister,” I said, though I felt more of a mother to her than Éabha had been, for she had died in childbed when Aoibhe had been barely walking, and her husband Amalgoid had not married again, so it was I who had the care of her and her brother. Éabha had been the beauty who men looked to, when she sat at her husband’s right hand, straight and tall as our mother had been. When Aoibhe grew to womanhood she was just as beautiful, and when she had children I helped care for them as well, since I had none of my own.

“You may join her, then, to contemplate the works of our Lord.”

I did not want to go, so I cast my eyes down and tried to look submissive. It was not something I was practiced in. “King Oswiu, I am trained in the ways of healing. Give me leave to remain in Dyn Eidin, and I will serve your household in that way.”

“I have my Holy Brothers to tend to the wounds of my men. But do you attend my wife, then, and our children.” He turned away, dismissing me, and set to the business of turning Dyn Eidin into a stronghold of the Angles. 

King Oswiu’s wife, Rhiainfellt, had been a princess of Rheged, and so also of the Hen Ogledd and a countrywoman of mine, and this made it easier for me to serve her without bitterness in my heart. She wore her dark red hair in a long braid, and her voice was soft and kind. She had two children, Alhfrith and Ahlflaed, though she seemed, to my old eyes, as young I had been when Cynan had ridden out of Dyn Eidin with my silk cloth around his neck. As I had promised, I bound up the children’s scrapes, and gave Queen Rhiainfellt herbs to make her monthly time easier. In the quiet of the woman’s house we talked, and I think she was glad to have a woman of the Gododdin amongst all the Northumbrians.

Not long after this, we were together in the still-room one day – I was showing her how to make an infusion of black willow bark and yarrow stems, to quiet a fever or ease a pain – when Tibba came in, agitated. Tibba was a Northumbrian, one of the women of the queen’s household who had the care of the children when their mother was attending to other things. “Mistress, come quickly!” she cried. “Alhfrith has climbed a tree and will not come down!”

Alhfrith was perhaps seven years old then, an active and curious boy who looked very like his mother. I was not at all surprised he had climbed a tree, but when Queen Rhiainfellt and I followed Tibba outside, and I saw exactly where young Alhfrith had got himself, I laughed out loud. 

“It is hardly a matter to laugh about, Lady Niamh,” said Tibba disapprovingly. 

“I am only laughing at myself,” I said, “for I mind that apple tree well, and when I was not much older than Alhfrith, I spent a whole afternoon upon that very branch.”

“You climbed the tree?” asked little Ahlflaed, her eyes wide in wonder.

“Na, na, it was Cynan who lifted me there, when I would not leave him be. I imagine he was tired of an annoying little girl following him everywhere.”

“Ahlflaed follows me everywhere, too,” proclaimed Ahlfrith. “I climbed up here myself, to get away from her.”

Ahlflaed started to cry, and Tibba scooped her up into her arms, telling her to hush. The queen looked up at her son and bit her lip. The branch was not really that high, though it was high enough that none of us three could reach well enough to grasp a child as sturdy as Ahlfrith. A fall would probably not break bones, but it would hurt.

“I thought it was great fun to be in a tree, for a while,” I told Ahlfrith. “I watched the birds landing in their nests, and the little insects crawling on the branches. But then I got hungry, and no one was about. I cried until my nurse came, who had been looking for me, and she got my foster-brother Ceredig, who came and lifted me down.”

“I’m not going to cry. I can get down myself,” he boasted.

“Oh, you can? Let me see.”

He looked at the ground, then, and I know to him it must have seemed very far away, as it had been in my own memory. I moved closer, thinking to catch him if it was needed, but he scuttled down the tree spider-quick. His mother took him into her arms and gave me a look of thanks.

But later, in the women’s house, Rhiainfellt came to sit by my side as I mended my gathering-bag that I used to collect herbs. “Lady Niamh? Was it Cynan Mac Clydno who put you in that tree?”

“Aye, it was Cynan Mac Clydno. He was a warrior of the Teulu when my father ruled here.” I was not surprised she knew the name, for Aneirin’s song had traveled the length of the Hen Ogledd. In Dyn Rheged they must have heard the song of the three hundred who left Dyn Eidin and the one who came back from Catraeth.

“It is hard to imagine him in this place, being heartless to small girls among the apple trees.”

Startled, I lifted my head from my sewing and looked at her. “You knew him, Mistress?”

“A little,” she said. “I was a child, of course. But he was kind enough to me whenever I went to see Mother Morvyth.” At my confused look, she added: “She was the sister of my father’s father, and I supposed them to be married.”

My needle slipped and pricked my finger. “I did not know he went to Dyn Rheged, or that he – that he married.” I tried to keep my voice from shaking. “I saw him last when he rode out to join the bodyguard of the emperor in Constantinople.”

“Oh, he went to Constantinople. He told marvelous stories of the Golden City, though he was no bard, and so they seemed always to ramble, and end in strange places. But he did not marry Mother Morvyth, though I did not learn that truth until later. They said that it was because the girl he loved had died young, and after that he had sworn to never marry.”

I could hear my father’s words in my ears, harsh as a crow’s caw. _Be gone by the morn’s morning, and do not come back._

I picked up my gathering-bag and began again to repair the tear I was mending. I made one neat stitch, then another. “And he is still there, in Dyn Rheged?” 

I did not know what I wanted her to say. That he was yet with this Morvyth? That he had died of his wounds, or of his years? I had imagined Cynan in the Emperor’s garden with leaves of gold and flowers of silk, as the old merchant had described for us; that he stood spear-straight at the door of the Emperor’s palace in shining armor, and hunted with leopards, and that his face was still the dear face I remembered, scarred and worn and lovely to me. 

“No,” she said. “A month before I was to marry, Mother Morvyth died of a fever. That is when I learned they had never wed. Cynan Mac Clydno left when they buried her, and I know not where he went.” She stood then, to leave me to my mending. “Perhaps he will return here for a visit one day.”

“Perhaps he will,” I said, but I knew he would not. _Be gone by the morn’s morning, and do not come back._ I made the last stitches, and bit off the thread.

They call me the forgotten queen. But I was never a queen, and it seems that, after all, I was not forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on a combination of history and myth. Oswiu, Rhiainfellt, Ahlfrith, and Ahlflaed are all historical, though little is known about them, especially the women. Rhiainfellt is identified in the _Historia Brittonum_ as the granddaughter of Rhun, a son of Urien Rheged; Urien became tangled up in Arthurian legend as the husband of Arthur's sister Morgan le Fay. Cynan Mac Clydno was also adopted into Arthurian legend as a Knight of the Round Table, and supposedly had a passion for Urien's daughter in these tales, named Morfydd or Morvyth.
> 
> Thanks to Riventhorn for beta reading.


End file.
